Awake, for morning in the bowl of night has flung the stone that puts
the stars to flight.
And, lo, the hunter of the east has caught the sultan’s turret in a noose of light

Spanish life is not always likeable but it is compellingly loveable – Christopher Howse: ‘A Pilgrim in Spain.

Cosas de España

March weather: It’s been a strange month, with northern ‘green’ Spain getting less that its normal rainfall and central and southern Spain getting far, far more. And suffering floods and damage as a result. In Talavera, for example, a Roman bridge was virtually destroyed. The explanation is said to lie in a ‘blocking’ anticyclone over the British Isles which has made the late winter/early spring squalls pass further south than usual.

Spain is one of the countries affected by Trump’s latest tariffs threat – against buyers of Venezuelan oil – a move which said to risk stoking turmoil in the oil market. 

Spain continues to reduce noise levels, this time in a Galician village. Though not all of its inhabitants were in favour of this.

Cousas de Galicia

A minor scandal is brewing around the selection of grounds for the 2030 World Cup. On Sunday, Vigo’s was in the list but on Monday it wasn’t – having been ousted by a Basque town whose points had been inexplicably increased overnight. Dirty work at the crossroads? It’s interesting to note that the head of the Spanish Football Association was prosecuted for corruption when he was head of the Pontevedra provincial government. So, no stranger to accusations of skulduggery.

No surprise to read that Galicia’s 3 small airports continue to lose out to to Oporto’s. While the latter continues to expand its services, Galicia’s facilities this summer will see 13 fewer flights than last year and almost 300,000 fewer passengers. Only London will have flights to/from the UK.

There are quite few homeless – sintechos – sleeping under PV city’s soportales. One was featured in the DdP this week – an ex sailor who says he used to earn €5,000 a month at sea but is now penniless. One wonders why. And whether he isn’t getting the state’s non-contributory pension of around €430 per month. Maybe he doesn’t meet the residency requirement or, more likely, isn’t 65. As I understand it, he might be able to benefit from the national minimum income scheme but this stipulates low earnings, savings, and other assets. So, if you have nothing, you get nothing??

Better news . . . Vigo’s big, week-long fiesta – La Reconquista – started last weekend.

Portugal

Another article on why Brits are preferring Portugal to Spain.

The USA

Trump never fails to surprise/amuse . . . He’s now offered himself as the next host of the Kennedy Center annual awards.

We all know that Trump is a lover of hyperbole, that his language is ‘that of a 5th grader’ [a 10 year old], that he ‘often punctuates sentences with superlatives’ and ‘frequently talks in personally evaluative terms’. Here’s my collection of his favourite words and phrases. There are surely others:-

• Great!
• Wrong!
• SAD!
• Nasty
• Beautiful
• Tremendous
• Swamp
• Huge(Yuge)
• Winning
• Crooked
• Rigged
• RINO (Republican In Name Only)
• Big/Bigly
• Fake news
• Lunatic left wing
• Radical
• Witch hunt
• More than ever seen before/Levels never seen before
• People don’t know that
• Hard to believe
• Law and Order
• Some/Many say
• Energy Independent
• Total disaster
• Won by a tremendous margin
• Doing a fantastic/tremendous/excellent job
• Never heard of him/her
• Hardly know him/he
• Would never have happened if I’d been president

Musk’s special status in Trump’s inner circle was starkly defined at the president’s latest cabinet meeting. Surrounded by department heads like Rubio, Hesgeth and Kennedy. Musk stood out for more than his red hat. Each of the others had a place setting with their name and title – except for one: Musk had only his name. The missing title was a visual representation of the controversial role the world’s richest man plays as one of Trump’s closest advisors.

This is an amusing take on free speech in the USA these days – from minute 3.49. Nice comments on social media from minute 15.15.

So, whose head will roll for the extraordinary blunder of adding a journalist to the Signal Houthi war group? Someone minor is my guess. Perhaps a White House telephone operator. Or some bigwig’s PA.

That gaffe, by the way, revealed the depths of the Trump administrations loathing of Europe. It will have important consequences. It surely makes Vance even more of a concern for Europe than Trump. I hope it’s preparing for a Vance presidency, conceivably quite soon.

Meanwhile. . . . A warning about Trump’s [totalitarian] attack on the American mind.

Russia

The economy, it’s claimed here, is in meltdown. If true, advantage should be taken of this in the peace negotiations over Ukraine. But can one have confidence that it will be​?

Spanish

• Energúmeno: Mad dog, madman, lunatic, ruffian, fiend, fanatic, etc.
• Bandazo: Lurch, marked shift, jolt, swerve.
• Descolocado: Misplaced, out of place/position, thrown off balance, unseated.

Did You Know?

In the USA, in the sports context, a ‘bracket’ refers to a diagram showing the sequence of matches in a knockout tournament, such as the NCAA basketball tournament, where fans often participate in ‘bracketology’ by predicting the winners of each game.

Finally . . .

A very pretty Galician song, in fado style. About the (mother)land, of course. And sung with morriña – Sentimento e estado de ánimo melancólico e depresivo, en particular o causado pola nostalxia da terra. Homesickness.

My thanks to those readers who take the trouble to Like my posts.

The Usual Links . . .

• You can get my posts by email as soon as they’re published. With the added bonus that they’ll contain the typos I’ll discover later. I believe there’s a box for this at the bottom of each post. If you do this but don’t read the posts, I will delete your subscription. So perhaps don’t bother if you have other reasons for subscribing . . .
• I can also be read on Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/colin.davies.752861 or on Substack at https://doncolin.substack.com/
• For new readers: If you’ve landed here looking for info on Galicia or Pontevedra, try here. If you’re passing through Pontevedra on the Camino, you’ll find a guide to the city there.
• For those thinking of moving to Spain:– This is an extremely comprehensive and accurate guide to the challenge, written by a Brit who lives in both the North and the South and who’s very involved in helping Camino walkers. And this is something on the so-called Beckham Rule, which is beneficial – tax-wise – for folk who want to work here. But see here on this. And this article ‘debunks claims re wealth and residency taxes’. Probably only relevant if you’re a HNWI. In which case, you’ll surely know what that stands for.
• Getting a mortgage in Spain: Some advice on this challenge.